FEATURE ARTICLES

Steve Hough, national sales manager, CEP Claddings, and Andrew Nicholls, sales director, CEP Ceilings, explain how modern cladding and ceiling materials can enhance the appearance of modern hospital buildings while offering practical, cost-saving, and environmental advantages.

Leaving the site in a better condition than when they left it, and minimising the development’s impact on the local scenery, reflecting the area’s history and natural heritage in the design, and exploiting the stunning location and views to provide a relaxing, therapeutic care environment, were among the goals for architects Nightingale Associates when they drew up plans for the Ysbyty Alltwen community hospital, spectacularly positioned high on the foothills of Snowdonia.

The Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT), the charity devoted to improving the lives of teenager cancer sufferers, has released the initial results of an independent study which it says prove that a high quality built environment, of the calibre seen in its 13 existing UK teenage cancer units, not only boosts patient morale by giving sick youngsters a feeling of control, but also encourages young cancer sufferers to complete their treatment, significantly impacting the number of positive outcomes. Jonathan Baillie reports on the study’s London launch.

According to Digitron, hospitals countrywide are seeing the benefits of DigiTrak, the company’s automatic wireless temperature monitoring system.

A simulated hospital environment has been created at Trumpf’s new facilities in Luton with the aim of promoting a better understanding of environmental factors in improving patient recovery, as well as key considerations such as lighting and televised training in theatres. Louise Frampton reports.

As debate continues over the importance of incorporating automatic sprinkler systems into healthcare facilities, Andy Passingham, associate director at Arup Fire, considers how Arup, the multi-disciplinary engineers for two high profile new Welsh hospitals under construction in Ebbw Vale and Caerphilly, addressed fire safety on both projects.

According to water purification equipment suppliers, estates and facilities teams are now increasingly involved in specifying, purchasing, configuring, and maintaining the sophisticated equipment required to clean and disinfect endoscopes, and, more especially, the water purification equipment needed to ensure an effective “clean”.

When it comes to ensuring that your cold storage operation and maintenance meets MHRA requirements, it pays to ensure that your service supplier knows what it is doing.

A “teenage penthouse” designed in consultation with patients and nurses with an “inspiring, homely feel”, and conceived using “sensitive architecture” to support young people in their fight against cancer, is how architect John McRae of ORMS Architecture Design describes the award-winning new Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT) unit at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. Jonathan Baillie reports.

Although only around 400 cases are reported annually to the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA), climate change, and thus warmer cold water supplies entering hospitals, the bacterium’s apparent ability to mutate, and the considerable challenge of properly monitoring, and successfully identifying and addressing, all potential infection sources on a large hospital estate mean an increasing risk of hospital patients acquiring the potentially deadly waterborne infection, Legionnaires’ disease.

Ricardo Codinhoto, researcher fellow, Patricia Tzortzopoulos, PhD academic fellow, and Mike Kagioglou, director, Salford Centre for Research and Innovation, The University of Salford, and Duane Passman, 3Ts programme director, Brighton & Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, examine the background and history to, and advantages and disadvantages of, evidence-based design in healthcare.

Independent sustainability consultant and BREEAM healthcare assessor James Rainbird explains in detail how he recently helped a large primary care Trust in north-west England with its carbon footprinting.

A new healthcare facility for the rehabilitation of patients with brain, spinal, and other neurological conditions, that architects Murray O’Laoire and Brian O’Connell Associates say will “raise the stakes” internationally in the treatment and care of such patients and, on its 2014 completion, be “among the world’s most accessible buildings”, is planned for Dun Laoghaire near Dublin.

With regular flu outbreaks a significant concern and cost / resource drain for the NHS, Vapac Humidity Control, reportedly the UK’s only manufacturer of specialist humidifier equipment for hospital use,

NHS Trust boards’ growing demands for major capital purchases to offer both short-term “added value”, and sound longer-term ROI, coupled with estates and facilities teams’ growing involvement in specifying, installing, and subsequently maintaining, the sophisticated equipment and control systems found in modern-day operating theatres, have meant a radical re-think in approach to winning new business for Trumpf Medical Systems.

With the focus on combating hospital-acquired infection never greater, debate over the respective merits of using silver ion and copper-based anti-microbial surface treatments to “beat the bugs” will no doubt continue as new study evidence emerges for each.

This April’s introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) should, argues Dave Covell, a principal at international environmental consultancy Environ, lead to major improvements in energy efficiency in the healthcare arena, potentially enabling Trusts to significantly reduce future energy bills.

How operating theatre design has changed, and the considerable differences in approach taken in the UK, mainland Europe, and North America in the past 5-10 years to enhancing the design of both the theatre itself, and the associated waiting, preparation and recovery facilities, were the subject of a fascinating presentation by Keith Millay,

As Robert Hacker, at the time director of facilities management at the St John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, California, explains, the hospital, one of the area’s largest, recently successfully utilised a new technology to eliminate mould, selecting a cost and time-saving fumigation process in place of the traditional “rip and tear” method.

In an edited version of a paper presented at the IHEA (Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia) 60th National Conference 2009, Stewart Hayes, principal consultant at Jakeman Business Solutions, argues that, with “traditional” means of purchasing and maintaining critical hospital infrastructure systems “becoming less viable”,